Concert to layer sounds

This Saturday at 2 p.m., the Jacobs School of Music will host its biannual computer music concert. The event will take place at Sweeney Hall in the Simon Music Building.\nThe concert will feature the work of nine students and the work of assistant director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music John Gibson. The concert will consist mostly of students playing pre-recorded compositions for the audience.\n"It's about listening, and maybe shutting your eyes," said Jeff Hass, the Director of the CECM.\nOne piece featured in the show will be interactive. Hass said this means that a performer will play an instrument live and a laptop will respond to the music being played. This portion is not pre-recorded.\n"We compose music using technology," Hass said. "We use computers to shape sound, and we record things and manipulate them." \nAlso, Gibson will show a video for his piece. As part of a collaboration with a professor in the art department, Gibson created the sound for the video.\nFor most of the students involved, this concert is similar to an art student's gallery show.\n"Most of them have started work on this since the beginning of the semester," Hass said. "So this is sort of the culmination of their semester's work." \nHass said the students often just think of ideas for a piece and then record certain sounds. For example, one of the pre-recorded pieces in the concert features someone dropping pebbles onto a wooden floor, although it may not sound exactly like that. Through technology, the sounds are often stretched, mutated or layered to create music.\n"We have a wonderful facility," Hass said. "The School of Music has supported us very well \n financially."\nThe CECM has been in place since 1965. However, computer music has only been offered as a major for the past four years. The degree is offered at the graduate level, and most undergraduate students are music composition majors.\n"I proposed (the major) and it has been a popular area," Hass said.\nAs for students unfamiliar to this genre of music, Gibson said that today's society is constantly surrounded by music that is made electronically.\n"It's a more experimental approach to sound," Gibson said. "I can pretty much guarantee that this is something you haven't heard \nbefore"